John Harle writes...

These notes are for all students of the saxophone, and are a brief introduction to my teaching method, which develops:

• easy and immediate response over all registers
• correct intonation over all registers
• even and open sound over all registers with a variety of tone-colours
• clear and even articulation from slow to extremely high speeds
• a relaxed approach
• stamina

My method can be applied to any style of playing, and on any mouthpiece, reed and instrument set-up. But whilst actually studying with me it’s important that you use a moderate mouthpiece and reed combination (to heighten physical sensitivity and relaxation), after which the response of wider mouthpiece lays, different mouthpiece chambers and a more varied choice of reed strengths can be understood.

The principles and practical exercises of my full method, once thoroughly embedded in the technique, will guarantee a practical understanding and ability on the instrument that will serve for a lifetime of playing.

On a technical level, this means that the use of our breath has been refined to a degree where the instrument feels no more difficult to blow than a descant recorder - at all dynamic levels, in all registers, both in legato and in rapid tonguing at furious speeds. At this moment, the saxophonist is free of technical worry, as the feeling of playing without physical tension has become intuitive, and the player's focus is entirely on musical interpretation and creativity - almost 'stepping outside of yourself' to join the audience in the enjoyment of the music. I call this level of performance ‘Flow’.

Performance and the Saxophone in Flow

At peak levels of performance, after time, experience and years of practice, you and your saxophone are in Flow.

Flow is the feeling in performance where we sense a physical effortlessness as we play, and are absorbed entirely in music itself. There's no selfconsciousness to hinder our desire to communicate the music we're playing to the audience, and our awareness of ourselves as communicators of that music is at a high level. Pure musicianship.

Tension and Release

Flow is, of course, a goal we all share and practise towards. But the nature of our practice, and how we achieve Flow in performance is worth thinking about.

If our technical goal is 'effortlessness of playing', our practice goal has to mirror this. To do this means that we have to systematically eliminate tension from our relationship with the saxophone. This is one of the core principles of my teaching.

Very often, and in many cases quite understandably, we work elements of tension into our playing, on the assumption that 'effort equals reward', thinking that we are 'building up our muscles', as an athlete would do, so that one day all this effort will have been worth it, and everything will feel 'easy'.

There are aspects of saxophone playing that require the development of strength in specific physical areas, but most often it takes something of a mindshift to actively seek and embed relaxation into our relationship with the instrument.

This does not mean that we become relaxed to the point of carelessness and collapse.

It means that we identify exactly what we need to do to get maximum results from the saxophone with minimum effort - and refine this way of playing so that it becomes intuitive.

We can bypass years of dull, tense, repetitive work by learning in a different way - and enjoy it as we go along. This is the quickest and most effective way to find our own, personal saxophone sound.

And:

• We become more efficient - leaner.
• We play the instrument - we don't 'fight' it or try to 'tame' it.
• We understand the saxophone - and eliminate guesswork from our playing.
• The saxophone responds to us - and frees us from frustration and negativity.

How to Listen

Power Versus Force

Listening to great players, you hear enormous power and energy released from the saxophone straight to your ears - and you’ll be inspired to practise towards having that power in your own sound. But the connection between what you've heard and your own relationship with the saxophone can often send you down the cul-de-sac of thinking that the work you need to do is 'more of the same' - try harder, push harder - often forcing yourself into knots of tension in an effort to emulate your heroes.

To have got to a stage where you are even vaguely interested in reading these notes, you will probably know what I mean!

Two ‘opposites’ spring to mind. They exemplify a healthy understanding of how to think when hearing great players.

• Effort versus Release
  Effort is not an end in itself. It does not guarantee any form of success in playing the saxophone. The effort to understand that at a virtuoso level a player is 'releasing' (not ‘pushing’ or ‘forcing’) breath through the saxophone, in a natural and economic way, is worth the effort.
  And if our efforts are directed towards finding that natural, easy way to play, we will succeed.
• Power versus Force
  Forcing ourselves through uncomfortable, repetitive physical routines whilst practising will make us worse players, and will certainly erode any pleasure we have in playing.
  Power is in relaxation and ease. Although hard to grasp at the beginning, and even harder once we’ve achieved some instrumental ability, because it probably challenges some of our assumptions about playing, progress is eventually made when we really hear and feel that power on the saxophone, and technical brilliance, comes from the relaxed body and breath connecting with the instrument.
  It is possible to bypass years of tense, uncomfortable and directionless practice by the application of a method that requires relaxation to work - just as the application of the same method can release even experienced players from a cycle of tension, frustration and disappointment into a positive, fluent and easy relationship with the saxophone.

Control versus Understanding

Instrumental 'control' is an over-used and misunderstood word. It implies a force needed to 'tame' or 'hold' a wayward creature. A healthy relationship with a saxophone (or a human!) is one of mutual respect - not dominance over it.

The saxophone's acoustic structure is an unchanging fact, and means that it will behave in a consistent way every time you pick it up. This fact is of great benefit to the student, and forms a knowledge-base that can eliminate conflict between our expectations and the saxophone's response.

In other words, the saxophone can teach us to play itself!

The job of an intelligent player is not to attempt to change the saxophone's behaviour, (you can't!), it's to understand it better.

Knowledge of the acoustics of the saxophone and how those acoustics react whilst connected to the human body via the embouchure are facts that no top-level player can do without, and should shape the work that we do.

Much that we see as the saxophone's difficulties - bottom register response, intonation problems and uneven sound has had 'quick -fix' solutions and compromises, but eventually there is no replacement for the feeling of a relaxed accommodation of the unbroken air column on each of the notes on the saxophone from low B flat into the altissimo register.

THE PRINCIPLES OF WORK

Doing and Analysing

The goal of ‘ease of playing’ should be firmly fixed in our minds as the centrally most important aspect of our practice.

But 'working towards relaxation' seems almost a contradiction.

It does however point us towards the type of work that is most valuable to us, and towards the shortest distance between where we are now, and where we want to be.

Your practice should fall into two categories. Doing and Analysing. They are inter-dependent, and all real progress is based on the equal importance of both.

• Doing - As instrumentalists, we are all 'do-ers' - we play, then hear and feel the results of our efforts.
• Analysing - We must also employ self-awareness as we play in order to monitor our relaxation and ease level, and create personal work-plans to eliminate tension.

The Journal

After a small amount of analytical work, we may well find that the pursuit of 'ease' in playing reveals embedded tension, and probably challenges some of our most basic assumptions about what we perceive to be the 'correct' way to play.

In order to give yourself an opportunity to make tangible, real progress, keep a running journal of your thoughts.

Write down details, diagrams, exercises or flashes of insight as you go along the path of improvement, and at the end of each day, write notes on where the following day's practice should begin - and stick to it!

To progress on the saxophone at any serious level we will have had to have been intensely self-aware in both listening and feeling during our practice sessions - so how do we practise?

HOW TO PRACTISE

Building in rest time

The pursuit of ease as the most important anchor in our playing means that we may have to re-think the way that we practise, and the crucial moments in practice are when we start playing for the day, or come back to the instrument after a break.

These are the moments when the muscles of the face, tongue and breathing system have had time to relax back to an ‘at rest’ position. Tension is reinforced by practising whilst tired, and countless hours are wasted playing scales or studies without thought being given to either intonation or the feeling of physical ease.

Repetitive practice without thought or analysis damages our playing.

At higher levels of playing, pressurised air is ‘locked’ all the way from the diaphragm, up through the larynx, into the mouth and onto the reed without blockage at any point in that system. To clear the passageways for this to happen, it means that we must analyse ourselves at the moment of the start of the note - and our best chance of feeling this is to play as often as possible from the point at which our muscles are at rest.

So build breaks into your practice routine.

Each hour of practice should have four ‘start points’. Each 15 minute section of practice should consist of ten minutes playing followed by five minutes rest - both physical and mental. So do something else for five minutes after every ten of playing.

Write an email, go outside, or make a coffee.

Divert yourself so that the return to practice feels physically and mentally fresh every time. This really is the best use of time available.

FACTS

• The acoustics of the saxophone consist of a series of facts
• Intonation is a fact - correct, sharp or flat
• Your sound and technique, the results of your playing, are facts
• Your relaxation level during playing is a quantifiable fact
• The optimum or non-optimum use of breath during playing is a quantifiable fact

Starting work by using these facts to inform the creation of our personal work-plans gives us confidence. They are invaluable, and help us find practice solutions that are in line with our playing goals. Curiosity, a flexible and analytical mindset, and the desire to experiment along factual guidelines are the tools that you will need, above all, to get to where you want to be.

For example:

Intonation is a fact

In the sea of variables that confront us as saxophonists, intonation is a constant - and this is where the guesswork stops. The fact is that the pursuit of good intonation combined with physical ease in playing brings with it a focussed and personal saxophone sound. But to follow this goal, and to achieve a level of playing where good intonation is a natural part of our playing, we have to Listen and Feel.

Listening and Feeling

There are two aspects to Listening and Feeling in technical practice:

• Listen for good intonation as we practise - to check this, we should have an electronic tuner available (and switched on!)
• Feel for physical ease and the release of tension as we play

These two points are inter-linked, and inter-dependent. If we follow these guidelines, the saxophone will teach us how to play itself.

ENDNOTES

The Saxophone - in tune or out of tune?

It's often said that the saxophone has been constructed as an ‘imperfect’ instrument, and is fundamentally ‘out of tune’. This is not the case. Whilst having similar compromises in terms of placement of octave/register keys as, say, the oboe or bassoon, it is an ‘in tune’ instrument - no more of a compromise than any other woodwind or brass instrument.

The teaching of the saxophone has been mostly to blame for this misconception, and this is no surprise when one considers how young the instrument is in comparison to, say, the flute, oboe or trumpet, which have had much longer to develop repertoire and methods of teaching.

Also, the only connection between the clarinet and the saxophone is the single reed. In the area of response and embouchure, the clarinet is completely different to the saxophone.

The saxophone's conical bore and system of air patterns and directions places the saxophone much closer to the oboe or bassoon.

The Teacher as Coach

The relationship between teacher and student is, clearly, one of fundamental importance to progress, but a belief that the student is empowered to take charge of their own playing through the teacher’s insights and encouragement is also fundamental to healthy, forward-moving progress.

The difference between relying on a teacher for every ounce of knowledge we possess about the saxophone and taking charge of our own playing is one of great importance to every serious saxophone student.

The most effective teacher is a coach - one who monitors the progress of a student's ability to reproduce, time after time, good intonation, sound, articulation, and musicianship, and gives insight to the student that will help them find the route to the next, higher, level of playing themselves. This way, the progress made is embedded, understood, and is a personal achievement.

This is the key to confidence on the concert platform, and to achieving Flow in performance. If you don't understand why you are being told to change aspects of playing, you have the right to question and challenge a teacher - and one who does not accept enquiry or reasonable challenge with grace and understanding is not the teacher for you.

A teacher who inspires, cajoles and supports you could be the key figure in your life's work.

© John Harle 2011.